Hoping for More, Wishing for Less
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: "You're going to regret this," he told her. Jane/Oscar, and some Jane/Kurt, in preparation for Monday's episode 1x16.
1. Chapter 1

**Title** : _Hoping for More, Wishing for Less_ (1/1)  
 **Universe** : _Blindspot_ , back half of s1  
 **Rating** : PG-13  
 **Pairings** : Jane Doe/Oscar, some Jane Doe/Kurt Weller  
 **Summary** : "You're going to regret this," he told her.

 **A/N** : God, I love angst. Thank the _Blindspot_ promo gods for this one.

I definitely didn't stay up until 1 AM writing this last night. Only a crazy person would do that.

* * *

She should've ended things after he kissed her. That would've been the smart thing to do. Just end the midnight meetings, and cut off communication, and walk away, and never look back—

 _I'm sorry._

He apologized almost immediately after she shoved him off, but she refused to hear it, refused to look at him as he said it. She didn't want to see his face, or look into his eyes, because she knew it would only make her remember more, and she was remembering enough already.

She was remembering _everything_.

The way they used to squeeze into her twin bed in the barracks, trying to be extra quiet so as not to draw attention and somehow always failing.

The way he'd passed her the ring in the middle of dinner one night, and sunk to one knee, and met her smile across the table with his own, offering a cheeky, _So what's it gonna be?_

The way he'd spent hours tracing different designs across her skin while they'd laid in bed, and how they'd corrected and adjusted the imperfections together, sharing the burden.

One touch of his lips, and she knew more about herself in two seconds than all that she'd fought to learn in the past half-year.

"Look, Jane, I—"

"Please shut up," she snapped, waving a furious hand back toward him even as part of her warmed in triumph at the sound of him calling her by her real name. He'd been calling her Taylor for weeks, almost relentlessly, and the sound of _Jane_ coming off his lips was so welcome, she might've celebrated.

But she could still feel the hard push of his lips against hers, could feel the strength in his fingertips as he'd grabbed at either side of her face, holding it to his, and she didn't much feel like celebrating anything. She jerked her head towards the door.

"Get out, Oscar. Leave me alone."

And for once, he was the one following her orders, instead of the other way around. He left without another word.

* * *

She didn't sleep much that night, after the kiss, though that wasn't really different from how she spent most nights. She hadn't been sleeping well recently—not since being abducted by Carter, not since Fischer's mole hunt, not since Kurt nearly died the other week, taking shrapnel to his jugular.

At this point, she was thinking she should ask Borden for sleeping pills. He's mentioned before that the trauma she's been through—and continues to go through—may warrant any number of prescribed medications to help her through the pain or the confusion or the anxiety.

She wondered if there was a particular medication that could erase Oscar's voice from her head, and the words he'd said before he kissed her. Because all she could hear when she laid down that night was his voice in her ears, in her head, in her blood, saying the words she knew she did not deserve:

 _I love you, I love you, I love you._

* * *

She didn't mention the kiss to anyone, not to Borden, not to Kurt, not to Tasha or Patterson or anyone else at work. Not that anyone asked. They were all too wrapped up in the next case, too ready to move onto the next danger, and even though part of her wanted to scream at them all to just slow down, and take a breath, she was also relieved at the quick pace. It didn't allow her to stop and think, either.

But just because she didn't actively think about the kiss didn't mean it didn't creep its way back into her head.

Again and again, the team had to call her name, to pull her from her distractions, as they were going over case files together. It got so bad that, halfway through the morning, Kurt had to pull her away from the rest of the group and ask her what was going on.

"Look," he muttered, keeping his eyes strategically trained at a spot beside her shoulder so he didn't have to look her in the face, "if after the other week, you don't want to be in the field anymore—"

"That's not the reason," Jane interrupted hurriedly. His eyes darted to hers at the force behind her voice, and she tried to quell it. The last thing she wanted was him kicking her off field duty. She needed a real distraction, a life-or-death situation, to remind her about what was important in this life: the tattoos and the cases and the truth, and not that man that had kissed her the night before and professed his love for her.

"I'm just... I'm distracted by my memories," she confessed finally, glancing around to make sure the team was out of earshot before she did her best to tell Kurt as much of the truth as she could. "I've been remembering things, and—and they're not really easy to swallow."

 _I love you,_ she could hear Oscar whisper in her ear, as if he were standing in front of her yet again.

"What kind of things?" Kurt was immediately on-guard, immediately worried, and she tried to find some comfort in the way he stepped closer to her, but all his proximity made her want to do was run in the other direction. The last thing she needed right now was for him to show an interest, too. After days of nearly complete silence...

"It's nothing," she muttered, pushing his concern away, hugging her arms to her chest as she shifted her feet and leaned away from him. "Just—just little memories." She gestured to Patterson's boards behind them. "Meaningless in the scheme of things."

"Have you talked to Borden about them? What did he say?"

"He..." Jane blew out a breath. _To lie or not to lie?_ The lies have gotten bad enough already these past few weeks, she knew. Not only the ones about Carter, but about Oscar, about herself, about the very high life-or-death stakes her actions have unwittingly put the team on... "He said don't worry about it," she said finally, knowing Kurt was still waiting for an answer. "He said it wasn't a big deal; he said to focus on work."

She could see it in his eyes when she finally dared to look up—he knew she was lying for certain now. And that would only make him suspicious about everything else she'd ever said, just as suspicious as the rest of the team, as Mayfair, as Fischer. She wanted to say something to ease the concern she saw there. She wanted to tell him it really _wasn't_ a big deal; she wanted to tell him he didn't need to worry about her mental state so much. But she knew he wouldn't heed such entreaties; he never had before. Him pulling her away from the others, talking to her in private, was proof of that.

"Well, if Borden says so..." Weller crossed his arms, clearly displeased with the decision, but the anxious look in his eyes was also giving her an out. _Just tell me the truth,_ she knew he'd say if they were alone, if things were different.

But they weren't alone, and things weren't different, and last week she'd had to sit in a conference room while both he and Assistant Director Mayfair yelled at her for keeping them all alive.

"Borden does say so," she replied, and then she turned around and walked back to the team.

* * *

She expected to feel guilty that day, after she lied to Kurt. She expected to feel disappointed in herself, angry at herself, for acting like that with him, but neither feeling came. She didn't feel good about what she'd done—far from it—but she did not feel shameful for it, either.

She watched him out of the corner of her eye as they changed later in the evening in the locker room, after once again narrowly escaping death, and she wondered why. She wondered why she did not feel guilty, not only for their conversation this morning, but for the kiss she'd shared with Oscar.

Things weren't exactly happening between her and Kurt—not anymore, at least—and that kiss hasn't exactly been planned, let alone consensual, but she still felt like she should feel something. For months, all she had focused on was him, all she had thought about was him, and now…

She looked at him and she wondered why she did not feel disloyal. Surely she owed more to him in this life than she did to Oscar in whatever past life she'd had with him, right?

So shouldn't she feel something, some sort of regret or allegiance? It was Kurt, after all, who had held her hand through all the uncertainty and the fear of those first few months. It was Kurt that had made her feel safe and at ease; Kurt, who had taken the time to look after her.

And it was Kurt, too, who had cut them off from each other as if all that had meant nothing. Well, if he wanted to know what was going on inside her head, he'd have to try a little harder for that privilege.

* * *

Five days later, when she got home from work, there was a text waiting on her second phone. A time and a place, like usual.

 _1 AM, Rooftop._

But then there was another line of text beneath he first— _It's about the mission_ —and she stared at it, both angry and relieved to see it there. She had never required such a stipulation from him before, and he had never offered. They had never needed it. Everything had always been about the mission. _Before_.

Jane closed her eyes, took a minute, two, before responding. In the end, she said what they both knew she'd say, what she always said: _I'll be there_.

* * *

It was cold when she got to the rooftop, and as she clutched her thin leather jacket closer and tightened her scarf around her neck, she wished he hadn't decided to meet up here. She knows why he did—so they wouldn't have to go back to that basement room where he'd kissed her—but still, she'd prefer being somewhere that was sheltered from the wind, even if it brought back bad memories.

He did not seem surprised to notice that there was more space between them when she joined him on the far side of the roof—a good five feet now, unlike the couple feet they'd whittled it down to in the past couple weeks.

"Look, before we begin, I just wanted to apologize for the other night...," he began, his eyes falling from hers to the floor.

She shook her head. That was the last thing she wanted to do before they began. "We don't need to talk about it," she said. "And you don't need to keep apologizing."

"The scared look on your face says I do."

"I'm not—" She broke off, closing her eyes. It took all her willpower to not just bury her face in her hands and scream. Why can't they just have their exchange of information and then go their separate ways? "That isn't what I'm worried about. I know—I get why you kissed me, okay, why you... why you said the things you said—"

"You mean why I said I loved you."

Jane closed her eyes, biting back a frustrated sigh. The _one_ time he pauses for clarification. "Yes," she muttered, forcing her eyes open, glaring at him, "that. I get why you said it, why you did it—"

"I'm not going to stop apologizing for what I did, even if you tell me to," he interrupted quietly. "I know what I did was wrong, especially to you, with your head all..." He gestured vaguely in the air, and she couldn't blame him. There wasn't really an easy or concise way to describe what was going on in her head. "But I won't apologize for saying I love you, because it's true, and I'm allowed to feel it, and I'm allowed to say it."

"You realize that I don't love you back, right?" she snapped, feeling a fierce need to match his declarations with her own. "That I might never..." She trailed off as quickly as she'd begun, feeling cruel now instead of vindictive as she met his eyes. Or maybe she had always been cruel with him, and she'd never realized it until this moment.

"I know," he said, nodding quietly. "That's, uh, that's the price I've got to pay, I suppose. That's what we agreed on."

She smiled a little, at the idea of the two of them sitting down and making this pact. Did they shake hands at the end of the agreement, to make it official? "Forsaking true love for the greater good, huh? Was that all part of the plan?"

He didn't smile back. "Yeah, something like that."

* * *

The information he gave her that night ended up helping her keep the team alive for another week, and she was grateful. She wouldn't pretend otherwise anymore—no matter how infuriating he was, how confusing, how cryptic, she _was_ grateful that Oscar was around. Without him and the information he so specifically parceled out, she and the team would be dead, many times over.

That they came closer than usual this week infuriated her, and because she had no one else to yell at about it, she went and yelled at him. He allowed it, for a while. He let her scream herself hoarse about how he was being reckless with the lives of her friends, about how he was putting her and countless others in danger by not giving her the full picture, about how he was _enjoying_ taunting her like this, _enjoying_ playing God from up here on these stupid fucking rooftops—

"Why are you so pissed?" he finally interrupted.

She blinked, breaking off in the middle of a rant, too surprised by the calm tenor of his voice to even carry on with what she'd been screaming about.

"What do you—"

"Why—are—you—so—pissed?" he asked again, repeating each word very slowly, very calmly, as if she were a child and he was teaching her a new language for the first time. "I mean, come on," he shrugged, spreading his arms. "What's there to complain about? Weller and the rest are fine, aren't they? I mean, I know I'm not the easiest guy to be passing along information to, and things haven't exactly been fun since I kissed you, but there's really no reason for you to be this angry at me. All your little Bureau friends are still kicking, aren't they? Your boyfriend's still drawing breath, isn't he? So why are you—"

"I'm pissed because of _this_ ," Jane cut in, unable to hear him talk about Kurt like he understood, at all, what was between them. Or what wasn't between them. God, even she didn't understand them anymore—if there even _was_ a them. "I'm sick of your I-don't-give-a-shit attitude! Why are you acting like this? You _know_ the stakes here, and clearly you care, otherwise you wouldn't be my little puppetmaster! Why do you have to pretend like you don't?"

Oscar laughed briefly, without humor. "Well, if you recall, I tried the whole I- _do_ -give-a-shit attitude, and it didn't work out so well. So I'm sorry if I changed tack when I realized I fucked up, Jane. Excuse me for trying to make things a little easier _on you_."

She looked away, trapped within his honest, surprisingly sensitive logic. Trapped within memories of the kiss, and all the nights since. "You're toying with people's lives," she said finally, the only weapon left to her.

"Yeah, well, so are you," he spat out, the fury in his voice leaving no question as to who she was toying with most.

She felt a sharp tug of guilt at his rightful anger, and another woman's avalanche of grief, when she saw the hurt in his eyes. As he moved away, she stared to reach out for him out of instinct, to try to apologize, to try to explain.

"Oscar, I'm sor—"

But he held up his hands, slipping away from her grasp easily. "You know what, I don't want to hear it, Jane. You were right: having to listen to people apologize for things they aren't really sorry about sucks. And for the record, just to set us straight, I do wish I hadn't been so forceful with you, but I'm not sorry I kissed you. I don't regret that."

She opened her mouth, intent on calling him back, but there were no words to say after that.

It wasn't until he got to the ladder, and started to climb down, that she finally found her voice.

"Oscar! Wait, you can't go! You have to tell me—whatever it is you called me here for! The information, the next case, I need to know—"

"We don't need to meet in person anymore for that," he said, not pausing on his way down the ladder. "And don't use the phone to contact me unless it's an emergency, got it?" She listened to his voice get fainter and fainter, watching him disappear into the night. "Just check your mail, everything you need to know for the week will be there come tomorrow morning."

* * *

He came through on his promise, like usual. When she woke the next morning and checked her always-empty mailbox, there was a single plain, unmarked white envelope inside. It contained one piece of paper, with about five sentences printed on it—cryptic as ever, but she memorized them anyway, knowing there would come a time, today or tomorrow, when his words would click and she would know what she'd have to do to stay alive, and to keep the team alive.

But it was strange, having these printed words here to refer to, and not his voice bouncing around in her head.

She had stayed up as late as she could, almost all night, trying to catch him the moment he stopped by her front door to drop off the letter, but she never saw him. She never saw anyone.

Not for the first time, she wished he were here with her, just so she could just sit him down and ask how in the hell he did all this, all the time. He said he was part of an organization, a cog in the machine, but from where she stood, it more often seemed like he _was_ the machine.

She typed out five different texts to send him, in various states of "What the hell are you playing at?" and "I need to talk to you", but she didn't end up sending a single one. She tossed the phone back into the false back of one of her kitchen cabinets, and then she headed outside.

 _Back to work_ , she told herself, trying to focus on the day ahead. But instead her mind stayed with that phone, with that envelope, and she spent the entire walk to the NYO looking around, glancing over her shoulder, expecting at all times to meet his eyes watching her go.

* * *

They went three weeks like that, with her no longer leaving her apartment at one and two AM, and him depositing unmarked envelope after unmarked envelope into her mailbox. Every night, she tried to catch him, and every night she failed. Even when she bought a large coffee from the Starbucks down the street at 10 PM, and nursed it all through the night to stay awake, she did not catch him.

He was worse than a ghost; he was like a hallucination at this point. If his clues didn't always end up helping the team, she might think he were delusion. Sometimes she thought he was anyway.

Finally, one Friday when she had had enough—enough of the suspicions at work, enough of the unanswerable post, enough of silent Kurt and disappeared Oscar—she called him.

He answered at once, a worried, "What's wrong?" bursting from his lips the moment their lines connected.

Her lips twitched very briefly up into a smile at the sound of his voice.

* * *

He showed up in record time, appearing at her doorstep so quickly that it made her wonder, not for the first time, if he kept a home base of his own somewhere nearby.

He was as frantic in person as he had been on the phone, and he checked and covered all the doors and windows before finally turning to her, in her now blacked-out living room, and asking again, "What's wrong?"

She didn't smile this time.

Instead, she looked away, crossing her arms so they wouldn't dangle loosely at her sides. Her worry from before seemed stupid now that he was here in front of her, in the flesh, talking. Of course he wouldn't just die out there, in the world, and leave her alone to soldier through this herself. Of course he'd find a way to stay alive—be it for her, or for the mission, it didn't matter; he'd continue to live. "I just wanted to make sure that you were still around," she said finally. "I got worried that you'd disappeared on me."

"I'm always around," he replied, but he didn't smirk like usual. She found she missed that, for some reason. As infuriating as his mysterious smart-aleck act had been, it had also been normal. Routine. Knowing what to expect from him, no matter if she liked it or not, had been a comfort. Now she had no idea where he was coming from, not physically, not emotionally, not mentally—and that scared her.

"Well, you're not around as much as I'd like, Oscar."

The words just slipped out, and she shut her eyes briefly, cursing herself, but when she blinked them open again, his face hadn't changed. He didn't look pleased or smug. He didn't even look like he'd heard her.

She resisted the urge to reach out and touch him to grab his attention; she knew that would only make things worse.

But somehow he must have read that desire in her—in her face or in her eyes or in her mere presence, which so suddenly longed for his—because he sighed, and rubbed a hand over the side of his face.

"Look, Jane, I know you've got this thing going on with Weller, okay—"

"There's nothing going on with Kurt," she cut in at once, feeling her face heat immediately at the mention, not even knowing why they were talking about him. Or why she cared. "He's made it very clear that he wants nothing to do with me outside of work."

Oscar raised his eyebrows, glancing to the ceiling. "Gee, thanks for the next-best vote, then. Feels really great to be a second choice."

"Thanks for letting me erase my memory," she snapped back. "Feels fucking fantastic not to remember any part of my life."

Before he could say a word, before his eyes could cut to hers with that old pain, she shook her head, and turned away. She bit back the _I'm sorry_ threatening to spill out—she knew the memory wipe was likely more _her_ fault, than his—and she walked into the kitchen. She braced herself against the counter for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut, willing herself to have control over _this_ aspect of her life—herself—if not anything else.

When she opened her eyes again, he was still standing across the room in the spot where she'd left him, staring after her. She didn't know what he was thinking about, but the look on his face, the solemn set of his mouth and brow, made her want to reach out to him, hug him, to say or do something that would make him feel a little less alone and miserable. A little less like his whole life had been wasted.

She knew now, has known for a while, what all of that felt like.

They weren't the right words, not even close, but they were all she could think of to say in the moment:

"Do you ever wish we could just go back to before? Before the memory wipe, before the mission, before people started dying left and right, before all these _Do the right thing_ responsibilities..."

She didn't really expect him to answer. She didn't expect him to do anything at all—except maybe walk right back out the door he'd just come in, and to never answer one of her emergency calls again. He'd be justified in doing that and nothing more, she knew.

But he did answer. He kept his voice low and his eyes on the floor, and despite the inches he had on her, the life he had outside of her, he looked so small and alone when he whispered the words.

"I wish for that all the time, Jane."

* * *

He stayed just long enough to tell her that this would be the last time they'd be doing this: the last time they would meeting in person, the last time they would talk on the phone, the last time they would communicate face-to-face or be in each other's vicinities, because—

"I knew the risks, okay, when I became your handler, and I thought I could do it; I thought I could take myself, my feelings, _us_ , out of the equation." He paced while he spoke, his mouth running faster and faster with every word, so that she had to focus on him, and practically read his lips, to understand what he was saying. "I fought tooth and nail to be the one to be there for you, to guide you through this. I knew it wouldn't be easy, not for either of us. I knew you wouldn't be cooperative, I knew you wouldn't fucking—wouldn't _recognize_ me, but I fought to be here anyway, because I didn't trust anyone else to do the job right."

He stopped pacing suddenly, and she inched into the other room, hovering just a few feet from him as he dug the heels of his palms into his forehead, and muttered a few curses so low even she couldn't quite hear them.

"I thought only I could do it right," he whispered finally, when he surfaced. He dropped his hands from his head, and when he turned to look at her, he didn't seem surprised that she was closed than before. He looked tired and worn-down, and she found herself wondering, as their eyes met, what the old her used to do when he got like this. How did you reassure a person like him?

"I thought I could do what needed to be done for the mission, for you, for everything we'd planned, but clearly..." He shook his head. "Clearly I can't do it anymore, because you're not getting the support you need, and you deserve better moving forward, so there will be someone else handling our communication with you from now on, and—"

She wasn't sure what made her do it at first, if it was instinct or memory or something else, but suddenly she was up on her toes, taking his still-talking head in her hands, and then her lips were on his and there was nothing except silence, punctuated only by the banging of her heart against her ribs and the soft sounds their lips made as she kissed him.

When she pulled back, she expected to see him smile. She was actually kind of looking forward to it. She had only ever seen him really smile once, with Danny, before he'd been shot, but when she pulled back, he wasn't smiling.

He was looking at her as if he had never seen her before, and as if he never wanted to see her again.

"What... What the fuck do you think you're doing?" he breathed. He was shaking beneath her touch. His eyes were blown wide. "What is _wrong_ with you? After— Why would you—"

The second time she kissed him, it was instinct and memory. And frustration. She just wanted him to shut up. She pushed her hands past his cheeks this time, past his ears, and buried them deep into his hair, lacing them together around the back of his skull to pull him down to her height, and trap him there with her, so that when he talked about leaving, he'd feel how much she needed him here, with her, beside her.

"I don't want someone else," she said when their kiss broke. "I want you to stay working with me, communicating with me. I want..." She brushed one of her thumbs against the curve of his upper lip, and she felt the heat of his breath when he let out a shuddering sigh. "I want you to stay with me, Oscar."

"Jane..." He held her face in his hands, just as tight as that first time, but tinged with a different, darker type of desperation now. He pressed his forehead against hers, hard, but she did not back away or flinch. "You're going to regret this," he told her.

She could hear the certainty in his voice, the promise there, but she refused to heed it. She regretted almost everything these days. What was one more mistake?

"You said you love me," she reminded him, her eyes leaving his lips to meet his careful, anxious gaze. "Is it so bad that I want someone who loves me to stay by my side?"

"You tell me. Are you sure you want the person who loves you to be me?"

Her face trembled at the question as she stared into his eyes. Finally she looked up, up to the ceiling, blinking back the tears she could feel pricking at her eyes. "Half of me is," she confessed finally, unable to lie to him at this moment, and hating that this was all the truth she could give him. He loved her unconditionally, with his entire heart; he loved her even as she said she didn't love him, and all she could give him was: "Half of me is very sure I want the person who loves me to be you."

She expected him to let her go, to pull away, to walk out then. She expected to see that old hurt in his eyes, to feel that twin pain flash through her as she absorbed his misery, and reflected it back.

But when she looked back down from the ceiling, and met his eyes, he had a little smile tugging at one edge of his mouth. It wasn't exactly happy, but it wasn't hopeless, either. "Fifty-fifty, you say? Well, I've faced worse odds with you before and survived," he whispered, shrugging, and she laughed at how inconsequential he made it seem, hiccupping a little. She was too relieved that he wasn't running away from her, too, to do much else.

"So you'll stay?" she asked, his fingers involuntarily tightening their grip on his jaw, on his cheeks, as if to anchor him here, with her, through sheer physical force.

He nodded inside the confines of her hands.

"Sure, I'll stay. Just promise me you'll give me fair warning before you leave again."

* * *

 **A/N** : I actually had a super fun time figuring out the logistics of how J&O would get from the promo to what I've been imagining in my head, and I hope you guys had an enjoyable read. Can't wait for next Monday, and can't wait to hear your thoughts! Thanks for reading! :D


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N** : A very short and unintended follow-up to the first chapter. Please enjoy. :)

* * *

He didn't say anything when she took the next kiss as an invitation to deepen things, and move them away from the front of the apartment. She could see the worry there in his eyes as she led him back to her bedroom; she could hear his voice from before whispering _You're going to regret this;_ but she refused to let his fear overpower this moment and what she wanted. He'd called the shots for far too long, and for once, she wanted to simply do something for herself.

So she did. She took his hand, and she brought them to the back of the apartment, and she closed the door behind them. It was dark in her bedroom too, but it didn't matter; they didn't need lights to do this, and they hardly even needed their eyes. She kissed him, holding him tight to her, as they stumbled across the room. When the backs of his legs hit the bed, he sank down onto the edge of it. She slipped into the place between his spread knees immediately, and was about to join him on the bed when he reached out and steadied her, holding her back for a moment by the hips.

She blinked down at him, confused, but then his hands reached for the hem of her tank top, and she froze as he started lifting it. Though she knew what she was getting into, leading him back here, and she was more than ready to try and figure out whatever it was that was between them—be it past or present—she still locked up when he pushed her shirt up. No matter if he loved her still, she was not the person he remembered. She was covered in tattoos, branded as someone else's, and she didn't know how he would react, seeing it all. She didn't want him to run, not now.

But he was careful, and calm as usual, as he stared at her inked skin. He lifted her shirt up just far enough so he could see her stomach, and nothing else. Her bra was still covered, her pants were still on, and yet she felt almost completely naked as he stared at patterns inked on her skin. She felt exposed and not ready, and then, as if somehow he could sense this, he leaned forward and hugged her. He pressed his face right up against the warmth of her bare stomach, and wrapped his arms around her waist, and held her so close she could feel the muscles in his arms as they enveloped her.

"I'm sorry about all this," he whispered, and she shivered at the hot feel of his breath against her bare skin. Goosebumps erupted across her abdomen, but he didn't seem to mind. He brought one hand froward and traced his fingertips very lightly across the cursive text inked over her stomach. "I know it can't be easy, wearing them all the time. It was just the only way to keep the information intact, and in play, and you agreed…"

She nodded against him, burying her chin into his hair. "It's okay. I know." She squeezed his shoulders, and brought her hands together to cup the back of his neck. "I don't blame you," she whispered.

"Do you blame you?"

When he tipped his head up to look at her, she pulled back, frowning a little, not sure what he was asking.

"Do you?" he pressed, staring at her, his eyes intent through the dark. "Do you really blame everything that has happened on who you used to be? Do you make her out to be some horrible villain in your mind?"

 _No,_ Jane tried to say, but the words wouldn't come out because, yes, she did tend to make the past her into the bringer of all evils. After all, the video had said as much— _You did this to yourself_ —and it was easy to just hate that past her, to blame her for everything, rather than think about the choices she had had to make, the sacrifices she had had to give, to be here, and to do this.

Well, not exactly _here_. And not exactly _this._

Jane looked down at him, sitting before her on her bed, and she wondered if the her from before ever thought about this. Ever entertained the possibility, the fantasy, that they might end up here, together again…

The look in his eyes told her he had thought about it, probably thought about it a lot. The look in his eyes told her of the guilt and the want roaring inside him.

"This is really against the rules, isn't it, Oscar?"

He glanced away, turning his head down. It took him a couple seconds to muster up an answer. "It was… highly discouraged by the people in charge. I'm not meant to…"

"Sleep with the woman you're in love with?" she supplied.

"…fraternize with assets out in the field," he finished pointedly.

She couldn't help but smile at his vocabulary. "That wording sounds very official for a secret anti-government organization."

"We're not anti-government," he replied at once, shaking his head. "Just anti-corruption. As for the wording…" He shrugged, and reached a hand into the neckline of his shirt, producing a simple metal chain. "I used to be a Marine, before all this. The jargon comes with the territory, I guess." He held onto the chain and let the tag slip down into her waiting hand. She tilted it so she could read:

 _BRENTON  
O. M. — A POS  
122 73 8584  
USMC — M  
NO PREF_

She smiled a little, tracing her fingertip over the embossed metal. "So you _do_ have a last name after all."

He laughed shortly. "Is that really the mystery you were most concerned about when it came to me? Whether or not I had a last name?"

"Maybe," she teased. She rubbed her thumb against the blank space between his initials and his blood type. "A-positive," she murmured.

"Mm. You are, too." He smiled a little, catching her eye. "That commonality has come in handy more than once. Not to make it weird or anything, but we do quite literally have each other's blood running in our veins."

She didn't know why that made her laugh, but it did, and she studied the tag for a second longer with a smile before letting it go. He was just gathering it back up to tuck beneath his shirt when she caught sight of something else riding on that chain he wore around his neck.

"What else do you wear on there?"

He kept his head down, pretending not to hear her, but before he could hide the chain beneath his shirt again, she grabbed onto it tight, and suddenly all the pieces, not just the one tag, went racing back into her hand. There was another dog tag, in addition to his, and also the diamond ring she remembered from her dreams. Her memories.

 _Not to make it weird or anything…_

"Sorry," he whispered, his voice suddenly hoarse, his head bowed. "I… I know it's a lot, for you, but I just wanted to keep them safe. You asked me to, before, and I didn't know how else…" He trailed off, falling silent as she inspected one item after the other. First, the tag bearing her name, her social security number, her blood type, and her religious preference. As she had been Army, and not in the Marines, her tags were similar, but different in the details, from his. She stared at her old first name, spelled out letter by letter, and tried to decide if she was relieved or disappointed that it was not _Taylor_. She didn't linger on it long, though, because there was something else of much higher import that he kept on the chain that she wanted to inspect.

She took the diamond ring in her hand, pinching it carefully between her thumb and forefinger. Even in the darkness of her bedroom, it seemed to shine, and she found herself wondering, as she stared at it, where in the world it came from. Had it been a heirloom, from his family or hers? Had he spent hours in jewelry shops, searching for the right one? Had she loved it when she'd seen it, or had they exchanged it for another? Or had the ring hardly even mattered, when compared to the man that offered it to her, and the promise it made for both of them?

"I can take it off," Oscar murmured, reaching up gently to cover her hand, and the ring, with his. "I don't have to wear it while we…"

But she shook her head, clutching the ring tight beneath his suddenly compromising manner. "You don't have to do that, Oscar. I don't want you to have to…" She didn't know how to explain herself without sounding greedy. The truth was that she was quickly becoming addicted to the strength of his devotion to her. She was hungry for proof of it. Hungry to be loved—not just by anyone anymore, but by _him_.

"Wear it," she whispered, and then she let his hand, and the chain, go. She took off her shirt, and helped him take off his, and when she joined him in bed, she didn't bother sparing another thought for the ring, or the tags, or the tattoos. She just let herself go, let herself be with him, and it felt more natural, being with him that night, than anything else had since she'd crawled out of that bag.

* * *

 **A/N** : Thanks for reading! Please leave your impressions below :)


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